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*laissez-faire capitalism | *laissez-faire capitalism | ||
Ideas of progress: | |||
* Directed: we are going towards something, converging on a final truth, singularity, resolution. Presumes there is a “something”, and it already exists, and could have been articulated from the beginning of the universe; we just haven’t found it/don’t know it yet. Progress is a process of gradual ''revelation''. But this directedness | |||
** implies some kind of intentionality on the part of the universe as a whole which is theistic. | |||
**contradicts basic known rules about entropy, in that it implies a world moving from disorder to order. | |||
**Seems strikingly inefficient. Why isn’t the universe in a state of singularity already, and it isn’t what grounds do we have for thinking it will naturally converge on one, without a directed hand moving it along. | |||
*Undirected: we are moving away from an imperfect history, or to adjust to unexpected changes in the environment. Progress is a process of ''adjustment''. | |||
===Path-dependency of design space and perspective chauvisnism=== | |||
What would “undirected progress” look like? Wittgenstein’s pithy question cited by analytical philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe: | |||
{{quote|He once greeted me with the question: “Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?” I replied: “I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.” “Well,” he asked, “what would it have looked like if it had ''looked'' as if the earth turned on its axis?” | |||
:—G. E. M. Anscombe, ''An Introduction To Wittgenstein’s Tractatus'' (1959)}} | |||
===Examples of utopian visions=== | ===Examples of utopian visions=== | ||
*[[Religion]]s that offer a post-mortem heaven or paradise — call these “dangletopian” programmes. | *[[Religion]]s that offer a post-mortem heaven or paradise — call these “dangletopian” programmes. | ||